The trouble for Lynch, when it came to his own district, is that Brown performed quite well there three years ago: not a whole lot of room to grow.

He did manage to grow Brown’s totals in much of his district — in some cases, impressively so. Lynch outperformed Brown by 26 percent in Brockton and 23 percent in Quincy. But in most cases, the gains were measured in single digits or the low teens.

In four towns — Cohasset, Hingham, Scituate and Westwood — he underperformed Brown.

Markey, by contrast, had plenty of room to improve on Coakley’s middling performance in his district. And improve he did.

He outperformed Coakley in every city and town in the district and often by big margins: 31 percent in Sudbury, 35 percent in Sherborn and 37 percent in Weston.

The margin topped 20 percent in almost half of the cities and towns in Markey’s district.